Concert review: Huey Lewis and the News can’t deliver

If you are fans of Huey Lewis, the news was rather grim after his performance at the Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs on Friday night.

Dino F. Ciliberti

If you are fans of Huey Lewis, the news was rather grim after his performance at the Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs on Friday night.

The smooth singer who was a hit-making machine during the heydays of the1980s focused his first five six songs on the R&B, jazz sounds for anupcoming album to a crowd that was quickly losing patience even as thesinger pleaded, “Do you like soul music?”

Finally, after the first five songs, Lewis stated, “We’ve got a new recordcoming out. We like to do that every 10 years. Hopefully, you will ownyour very own copy. This is for the hardcore fans.”

Those fans basically stayed glued to their seats, finally coming to lifewhen Lewis — who played harmonica and was in relatively fine voice despitea shaky start — told the crowd, “Here is one dedicated to the veterans”before going into “Walking on a Thin Line.”

Then, the crowd got going as Lewis — with old bandmates in drummer BillGibson, keyboardist Sean Hopper and guitarist/saxaphone player JohnnyColla — struck a chord with “I Want A New Drug,” a chart-topper and heavyfeature in MTV’s video rotation. Lewis moved on to the slower “SmallWorld” before changing things up with some great a capella songs, theclassic “So Much in Love” and another oldie Lewis called “beach music.”

The crowd couldn’t wait as Lewis fired off classics “The Heart of Rock ‘n’Roll” and “Heart and Soul.”

That one-two punch turned out to be the major highlight because the setwas basically over at that point, just when the crowd was finally ready torock.

Lewis and the band returned for encores “The Power of Love,” “Do YouBelieve in Love” and the age-appropriate “Workin’ for a Livin’.”

As one fan who saw Huey Lewis and the News 24 times remarked after theshow, “this was 24th of 24.”

It’s a shame, too.

Lewis owned this crowd but by not starting off with some high-energyrockers, the show lost steam on a humid night when it should have reallysizzled.